Discussion
Bacteria that are adapted to live under sub-optimal temperature conditions have been isolated from permanent and temporarily cold environments [32]. Despite abundance of publications reporting on applications of such psychrotolerant bacteria, there has been no defined method to selectively isolate psychrotolerant bacteria or identify this fraction of bacteria from the rest of soil bacterial population [12,13,15]. Moreover, isolation using culture-based techniques which make use of non-selective media such as nutrient agar, strongly limit the number of psychrotolerant or psychrophilic isolates [33–35].